But I’m not all alone ….
His fevered gaze fell on the boar, curled up and snoring between the twin palms.
Rat-face is food. Rat-face …
He reached for his bow and pulled an arrow back against the string.
But —
Go close. That’ll give you a quick kill.
He stopped short. How could he even think of killing Rat-face? The boar had been his only friend these last few days — maybe the final days of Will’s whole life.
Food. That was all that mattered. This wasn’t about friendship. It was a matter of survival.
He drew back the arrow.
Harder! he exhorted himself. If the first shot reached the brain, there would be no suffering.
His eyes filled up with tears. “I’m sorry, Rat-face,” he whispered.
As soon as the name passed his lips, he had a startling image of a burly, sour-looking sailor standing on the deck of a ship. It was so vivid that Will could actually make out the word painted on the man’s life jacket: PHOENIX.
Shocked, he relaxed his grip on the bowstring. The arrow snapped off the stretched vine, its dull end hitting him in the eye.
“Ow!”
He staggered a little, but he hardly noticed the pain over what was going on in his head. It all came rushing back with the force of a runaway train — the other kids, the storm, the explosion, the shipwreck! And those terrible days of drifting on the raft, parched and starving, not knowing if his sister, Lyssa, was alive or dead.
He felt a great swell of joy in his chest. She wasn’t dead — he had seen her and talked to her. That was real, wasn’t it? And the others too. By some miracle, they had all survived the sinking of the Phoenix and had drifted to the same place, wherever it was.
The others! He had been hiding from them, calling them liars and kidnappers, stealing their food, vandalizing their camp. And their only purpose had been to help him.
They must think I’m crazy!
He considered this. They were right. He was crazy. Or at least he had been.
Not anymore.
“Come on, Rat-face!” he exclaimed excitedly.
The boar awoke and shot him a questioning look.
“Let’s go!” He ran off into the jungle, Rat-face trotting along at his heels.
Smell was a problem for those who lived on the island. In this heat and humidity, just the regular chores of day-to-day survival wrung the perspiration out of the five castaways. Someone was always battling jock itch or athlete’s foot or a weird tropical fungus. If it hadn’t been for their easy access to the ocean, the stink of the whole group would have been unbearable.
It was always harder to notice on yourself. Luke risked a sniff when nobody was looking. Pee-yew! The mud of his and Ian’s tunnel out of the hut and the sweat of their desperate escape had mingled with the usual jungle steaminess to create a pretty strong funk.
Bathing was always a tricky tightrope to walk. With the girls around, Luke wanted his privacy. But he didn’t want to be like Ian. The kid was so shy that he would go miles up the beach, and a simple bath would end up taking him all day.
He walked along the shore, past the can opener, to where the sand gave way to rocky coral. He kicked off his shoes and dove through the incoming breakers, letting his clothes wash on his body. He was no expert swimmer like Charla, but he enjoyed the ocean. This was the only good thing about being shipwrecked, he reflected. No beach at home had such perfect water, clear as glass, with not the slightest trace of the murkiness of pollution.
He pulled off his shirt and swished it through the waves like a washing machine agitator. Then he wrung it and spread it on the rocks to dry. Next he wriggled out of his shorts and underwear and did the same. Then he went for a long swim. The water felt cool and refreshing, and some of the tension loosened in his neck and shoulders. Even though it was deep here, he could clearly see plants and rocks and starfish on the bottom ten feet below.
Peace. The ocean was the only place he ever found it, where he could free his mind from the terrible danger all around him. He didn’t forget his problems here. But he could somehow separate himself from them. There were times where he could even remember the old Luke Haggerty, the one from way back before this avalanche of troubles had started with that lousy locker inspection.
Here he could lose himself in the pounding of the surf, the screeching of gulls, the rustling of the wind through palm fronds, the hooting of an owl ….
An owl?
The signal!
Luke must have swum, but he didn’t remember a second of it. The next thing he knew, he was scrambling onto the coral, cutting his feet, shins, and knees to ribbons as he leaped into his shorts. Then he was pounding up the beach. He could see his fellow castaways performing their two-minute drill. The wind roared in his ears as he sprinted — that and a different, terrifying sound: the approaching bark of a hunting dog.
He arrived at the scene at the same time as Charla.
“Two men!” she hissed, pushing sand over a dismantled still. “And the Doberman!”
Luke was proud of the group. There was panic in their eyes, but their bodies were pure efficiency. The stills disappeared beneath the beach. Their footprints were wiped clean. Then into the woods, where they flattened the lifeboat and pulled the palm blanket on top of it.
By now, men’s voices could be heard along with the barking. The castaways melted into the underbrush.
“What’s the deal with this dog? It’s going crazy!”
They were no more than a hundred feet away.
Crouched next to Luke, Charla froze in shock and horror. “The fish!” she breathed. “We forgot to open the stinky fish! The dog smells us!”
Too late, thought Luke. What he heard next turned the blood in his veins to ice.
“It’s onto something!” the other man said excitedly. “Let go of the leash!”
A split second later, Luke caught sight of the brown-and-black Doberman bounding through the underbrush, fangs bared. It was fifty feet away, then thirty. Beside him, he heard Charla gasp. His mind worked furiously. What could they do? He came up blank. For the first time, the castaways had truly arrived at zero options. Their adventure was ending right here, right now.
At that moment, a guided missile shot out of the bushes and slammed full-force into the dog.
It all happened so fast that, for a second, Luke had no idea what was going on. He only knew that, instead of being savaged by a vicious animal, he was still in hiding, watching a monumental struggle.
Then he heard the squeal.
“The wild boar!” he whispered.
The fight was furious and deadly. The boar’s head pumped up and down like a pile driver as it slashed at the dog with its tusks. The Doberman lunged and growled, biting at the enemy’s throat with razor-sharp fangs. The boar was bigger and much heavier, but the Doberman was faster and more agile, leaping up to tear at the thick neck. The boar’s head weaved back and forth, slashing at the dog’s exposed underbelly.
Blood began to spatter, but it was impossible to tell which animal it was coming from.
Terrible howling. And suddenly, the dog was on the bottom, and the boar was in charge.
All at once, the two men came crashing through the underbrush. Red Hair was in the lead. “What the — ?” He raised his pistol and fired a shot into the boar’s neck.
With a squeal that was half rage, half surprise, the boar pulled back from the Doberman and raised its massive, blood-streaked head.
The second man pulled his weapon too, and he and Red Hair opened fire. It was a scene straight out of a gangster movie — shot after shot, bullets flying. Luke tried to burrow himself into the soft ground.
The boar advanced one menacing step and then became seemingly boneless, collapsing in a heap among the vines, dead.
The two men ran up to where the lifeless Doberman lay.
“I can’t believe it!” Red Hair was furious. “That fat tub of lard is gonna blow its blubber over this dog
!”
“And all for nothing,” his partner agreed in disgust. “It was smelling that ugly hog all along.”
“That’s the good news,” Red Hair commented. “At least now we can leave this godforsaken bug farm.” As the two started back through the jungle, he reached out one heavy boot and kicked the dead boar. “Stupid pig!”
Luke’s mind was reeling, but he forced himself to remain perfectly still. All would be lost if one of them jumped up too soon before the smugglers were well out of range. It was only ten minutes, but it felt like two lifetimes. There was a rustling of foliage, and Lyssa crept out of hiding and stood over the body of the boar.
“It saved our lives.”
One by one, other castaways emerged from the underbrush.
“But why would it fight for us?” asked Charla.
“Maybe he just didn’t like Dobermans,” Luke suggested. “I know I don’t.”
J.J. looked into the boar’s open, unseeing eyes. “We’ll call it even on the mac and cheese, okay?”
Charla clouted him on the shoulder.
“Well, it’s just a pig,” he defended himself.
All at once, they heard a whimper.
Everybody froze. Luke put his finger to his lips.
There it was again. A weak sigh. Barely a breath.
Definitely human.
They looked around. Where could it be coming from? The two men were gone. The castaways were all accounted for.
And then Ian tripped on something. He gawked. “Luke!”
There, beneath a low fern, lay Will Greenfield, white and still. Ian felt for a pulse. It was strong and steady.
“Oh, my God!” Lyssa dropped to one knee beside her brother. The tattered cuff of Will’s shorts was soaked red. She pulled the fabric up. Beneath it was a bullet wound, just above the thigh.
“Aw, Will!” she said, voice shaking. “Why is it always you?”
His eyes fluttered open. “Don’t yell at me,” he said faintly. “I didn’t do it on purpose.” He waved. “Hi, Luke. Ian. Charla. J.J. Long time no see.”
“You know us?” blurted Charla.
Will was sheepish. “I do now. Did you guys see Rat-face?”
“Rat-face?” repeated Luke in disbelief.
“Not that Rat-face,” Will explained. “I’ve got a pet boar.”
Lyssa put a hand on his arm. “No, you don’t,” she said gently. “Not anymore. But it was a real hero, Will. You can be proud of it.”
“Oh.” Will looked sad. Suddenly, he winced in pain, grabbing at his wounded leg. “Man, that hurts!” he groaned. “How bad is it?”
Instinctively, they all turned to Ian.
The younger boy backed off. “How should I know?” He added, “But there’s no exit wound, so the bullet must be still in there. He needs a doctor.”
“They don’t make jungle calls,” J.J. reminded him. “I’ll get the first aid kit.”
“Hang in there,” Lyssa encouraged her brother. “You’re going to be just fine.”
She was grateful that he couldn’t see how little she believed her own words.
The stills were up again, their small fires burning, not on the beach, but just inside the trees. In their midst lay Will, stretched out on the small piece of cabin top that had miraculously delivered four of the castaways from a burning, sinking ship to the safety of the island.
“Hey, Lyss, I never said thanks for blowing up the boat.”
“You were the one who was supposed to be ventilating the engine room,” his sister retorted. “Shut up and rest.”
It was a pointless argument. But somehow it felt comforting to be bickering again.
She checked the bandage on his wounded leg, not having the slightest idea what she was looking for. “Uh-huh,” she said — competently, she hoped.
She joined Ian, who was picking heavy seeds out of a durian and setting them aside for roasting. “The ocean has to be out of fish before I eat those things,” she commented sourly.
Ian looked grave. “We’ve got to get your brother off this island.”
“Will’s just a big complainer,” she pointed out. “That shows he’s getting better. The bleeding has finally stopped.”
The boy shook his head seriously. “There’s going to be an infection for sure with that bullet in there. It’s no big deal if you can get medical attention. But our first aid stuff is going to run out fast.”
Lyssa blinked. “He could die?”
He shrugged helplessly. “Not tomorrow, not next week. But if we can’t get him to a hospital — ”
“Lyss,” called Will from the raft, “could you get me some water?”
“You’ve got legs!” she snapped automatically.
It was so instant, so instinctive for her to take a shot at him — the result of twelve years of sibling warfare. Practically every detail of her life existed to be in opposition to something about Will. He struggled in school, so she slaved for straight A’s. He was cautious, so she tried to be impulsive.
What would she do without him? In a bizarre way, they were a team. They were even named as a pair, after flowers — Sweet William and Sweet Alyssum. A cheesy move by their parents, she’d always thought. But now it seemed wiser and more telling than Lyssa had ever imagined.
What would she be without Will to fight with, to push off against? Would she just disappear?
“I mean — ” She wasn’t going to cry. No way. Not in front of Will. “I mean, coming right up.” She ran for the water keg. “Anything you want, you just ask.”
* * *
The twin-engine plane left first, carrying away Red Hair and his two colleagues. Mr. Big left on the second aircraft. By this time, his white suit was a mass of wrinkles and sweaty soil. If he was broken up by the death of his Doberman, he gave no sign.
Luke, J.J., and Charla watched from their usual spying place as the single-engine plane rose from the water, carrying its illegal cargo of tusks and animal parts to who knew where.
“Think they’ll be back?” asked Charla.
“Count on it,” said Luke. “This is the perfect meeting place for an exchange like that. Why do you think they needed to make sure there wasn’t anyone here but them?”
After so many days of hiding, it felt almost unnatural to be able to run down the coral bluffs to the beach without fear of the smugglers. Luke kicked off a shoe and dipped his toe in the warm water of the lagoon. It was hard to believe that only a week had passed since they had witnessed Red Hair executing one of his own men in this very spot.
J.J. skipped a flat rock on the surface of the lagoon. “Well, we’ve got the run of the place now. We can throw wild parties. Too bad there’s nobody to invite but a bunch of snakes.”
“We can get rescued,” Charla corrected pointedly. “This is our big chance until the smugglers come back. If we blow this …” Her voice trailed off.
Once again, Luke used the footprints on the beach as a guide to find the hidden military installation. Even though he’d been there before, the jungle was so dense that the Quonset hut was virtually invisible until the castaways were standing right in front of it.
J.J. stepped inside and looked around with distaste. “What a dump!” he said sourly. “Man, remind me never to join the army.”
Charla’s eyes were wide. “It’s hard to believe that all this was here to kill people.”
“There was a war on,” Luke reminded her.
“Yeah, but one bomb — wiping out a whole city.” She shook her head sadly. “It’s scary what we’ve taught ourselves to do.”
Luke noted that the sleeping bags were no longer on the benches. A newspaper lay folded over on one of the seats. He flipped it open. USA Today, from July twenty-fifth — the day the first group of traffickers had arrived on the island.
Luke’s jaw dropped. “Guys — ”
There, at the top of the front page, was Mr. Radford, the mate of the Phoenix. The photograph showed him being pulled out of a battered dinghy by sailors on a Chinese
freighter. As the others gathered around, Luke began to read:
HEROIC MATE FOUGHT IN VAIN TO SAVE KIDS ON SINKING BOAT
J.J. Lane, son of actor Jonathan Lane, is one of six youths lost at sea and presumed dead after the sinking of the Phoenix, the flagship of Charting a New Course, a renowned sailing program for problem kids. James Cascadden, 61, captain of the sixty-foot schooner, was also lost in the accident, which took place in near-typhoon conditions five hundred miles northeast of Guam.
According to Calvin Radford, 37, the only survivor, the tragedy began to unfold when Lane, 14, inexplicably tried to raise sails at the height of the storm. At that point, wind gusts up to seventy knots and forty-foot waves “tore the boat to splinters,” according to Radford.
“He was a crazy kid — maybe Hollywood does it to them. But he didn’t deserve to die like that,” Radford said emotionally. “None of them did.”
Luke Haggerty, 13, of Haverhill, MA; Charla Swann, 12, of Detroit, MI; Ian Sikorsky, 11, of Lake Forest, IL; and Will Greenfield, 13, and his sister, Lyssa, 12, of Huntington, NY, were the other victims.
Radford, the Phoenix’s mate, fought desperately to save the six young people after Cascadden was swept overboard by “a freak wave.” It was only after the schooner sank out of sight that he climbed aboard the twelve-foot dinghy he would sail for eight days and more than two hundred miles before being rescued by the Wu Liang, a freighter out of Shanghai en route to Honolulu.
When called a hero, Radford broke down in tears. “Those kids were my responsibility! I should have found a way to save them.”
The Maritime Commission has submitted his name for their highest medal for bravery.
Jonathan Lane could not be reached for comment, but according to spokesman Dan Rapa-port …
Luke put down the paper, shaking with rage. “I’m speechless!” he seethed. “Rat-face — a hero! After what he did to us — ”
“Will’s Rat-face had more heroism in his little finger,” Charla agreed emotionally. “You know, if boars have fingers.”
J.J. shook his head. “My dad made a comment through a spokesman,” he chuckled. “A spokesman! It’s so totally like him that they almost had me fooled.”
Survival Page 8
